Arts & Culture | Books

Early on in Jodi Picoult’s new novel “The Storyteller” (Atria), Josef Weber comments that Sage Singer doesn’t say much in their grief support group, but when she does speak up, she’s a poet. She answers firmly that she’s no poet, but a baker.

Edie Middlestein loves fast-food sandwiches, potato chips with onion dip, and Chinese dumplings stuffed with spicy seafood. She likes devil’s-food cookies too, and once, late at night, while everyone at home was sleeping, ate two boxes of them to see what would happen. She didn’t feel a thing.

A figure of great stature, and sometimes the center of controversy in England, where he has served as chief rabbi and the public face of British Jewry for two decades, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is certain to add to both his stature and the controversy that surrounds him with the publication of his newest book.